My reply isn’t based on a whole lot of science, but it rings true for this nature lover: “When they gang up and create a god-awful racket, you know an owl’s got to be close.”

An imposing great horned owl and her owlet.

An imposing great horned owl and her owlet.

RICK MARSI / Correspondent

Often, that owl is a great horned owl, flying menace of still midnight forests. And, sometimes, that owl might be camped on a nest. Lucky you, if your travels have taken you nearby for viewing.

So it was that a friend of a friend found a nest. Nonstop crow chaos directed her view to a lofty white pine, 60 feet in the air, in a hardwood and evergreen forest. Where the trunk of the pine and three branches converged, a loose bunch of sticks held a lone great horned chick. Perched above it, a parent held court.

Several days later, I found the same thing, on a morning when cold rain made woods walking not all that pleasant. There they were, quite the pair: parent staring me down, eyes half-closed but observant; owlet covered with fuzz, its “great horns,” or ear tufts, just emerging.

I am calling her “her” because females do all the incubating, while males bring home food to the nest.

And even though incubating was over, I know females grow bigger than males, and this owl looked gigantic.

Her ear tufts, for example, looked 2 inches long. They’re not horns, of course, and they’re not owl ears, either. Their purpose is to make one of nature’s most fearsome birds look even more like an opponent you don’t want to fight.

Message received on this end, as I looked at those talons: meat hooks used to skewer all kinds of prey in the dark, even skunks.

Also larger than life were the owl’s facial discs: two cup-like arrangements of feathers surrounding its eyes. Designed to funnel sound into the owl’s ears (which are located beside its eyes and hidden by feathers), the discs allow great horned owls to hear a mouse squeaking hundreds of yards in the distance.

And that baby, so cute, not a killing machine, maybe 50 days out of an egg. Great horned owls begin nesting in January, often usurping a nest built by red-tails or crows. Even though their young can fly by the end of the spring, parents continue feeding them into October. During this process, fledglings follow their parents around, always hungry, always screeching for food. It’s a screech people find raises hairs on their necks, especially at three in the morning.

On this morning, nothing that drastic took place. It rained. I looked up. The two owls looked back, showing no signs my presence disturbed them. But were I to walk a bit closer, who knows? Owls are known to attack if they sense any threat to their nest.

I’ve been attacked by a goshawk for getting too close. No need to tempt fate again this fine morning, throw myself to the ground and feel talons just brushing my head. Instead, I said thanks, turned and left the owls just as I found them.